The United States Justice Department claims that a Chinese spy is suspected in stealing trade secrets from multiple US aviation and aerospace companies. Officials told that the suspect’s name is Yanjun Xu, a senior officer with China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS). According to their investigation, he was lured to Belgium by FBI agents who then transferred him to the U.S. for prosecution on economic espionage charges. Xu Yanjun, who also uses the names Qu Hui and Zhang Hui, was extradited to the US on Tuesday with assistance from Belgian authorities for seeking “to steal trade secrets and other sensitive information from an American company that leads the way in aerospace”, Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers said in a Justice Department announcement.

Officials informed that Xu ran a 5-year operation trying to steal trade secrets from Ohio-based GE Aviation (one of the world’s leading aircraft engine manufacturers). Besides, he also spied on other aviation companies, including US military suppliers. According to investigators, Xu planned to recruit sources in and around the companies and bring them to China, stealing ideas and technologies.

According to court papers, this February Xu recruited a GE Aviation employee for sending him confidential information. This employee sent a presentation that contained the company’s proprietary information, but later Xu followed up with him asking for specific technical information. He arranged a meeting with the employee in Europe, where he wanted the worker to provide additional information from GE. Xu was arrested after traveling to Belgium in April. After his appeals failed, he was extradited to the U.S. on Tuesday and is scheduled to make his first court appearance Wednesday afternoon in federal court in Cincinnati, Ohio. “This unprecedented extradition of a Chinese intelligence officer exposes the Chinese government’s direct oversight of economic espionage against the United States,” said Bill Priestap, the assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division. Besides, Assistant Attorney General John Demers claimed that ‘This case is not an isolated incident. It is part of an overall economic policy of developing China at American expense’.

CHALLENGE

According to a 2017 report by the United States Trade Representative, Chinese theft of American IP currently costs between $225 billion and $600 billion annually. “China has sought to acquire US technology by any means, licit or illicit,” said James Andrew Lewis, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. President Trump has rightly taken note of this as it is reported, ‘Perhaps most concerning, China has targeted the American defense industrial base. Chinese spies have gone after private defense contractors and subcontractors, national laboratories, public research universities, think tanks and the American government itself. Chinese agents have gone after the United States’ most significant weapons, such as the F-35 Lightning, the Aegis Combat System and the Patriot missile system; illegally exported unmanned underwater vehicles and thermal-imaging cameras; and stolen documents related to the B-52 bomber, the Delta IV rocket, the F-15 fighter and even the Space Shuttle.’

Xu is not the first spy arrested in the U.S. According to officials, he is the second Chinese national in two weeks charged by the Justice Department with attempting to steal aviation industry secrets. Besides, both cases appear closely linked, officials said. Spying has become an incredible challenge for the U. S. today.

The FBI has a clear message for the US public: Chinese society itself is a threat to the US due to its heavy engagement with espionage and influence campaigns. The DOJ, USA and the FBI identify Chinese spies as a real danger to the United States and its citizens. Moreover, as China is not a democratic country, it’s almost impossible to know if you’re the subject of Chinese espionage. To provide national security and to ensure they protect nation’s interests from enemies both known and unknown is the main task of counterintelligence and law enforcement agencies. It is very well known the people who belong to a specific organization have specific form of training and code words and can be distinguished from general public. iCognative by Brainwave Science is one such technology that can specifically screen and identify who is a Chinese spy and who is not with over 99% accuracy.

iCognative is a disruptive technology, with proven performance in real life cases, has a power to determine the fact of the presence of crime-related information in the brain of the suspect. In the case of arrested Chinese Spy, US intelligence agencies along with FBI can conduct a iCognative test that can identify individuals with specific training or expertise in terrorism, specific knowledge that a member of an intelligence organization like the CIA or the KGB will only have or the expertise that a bomb maker might possess. Within an hour of testing, the test delivers definitive results with only two outcomes from the suspect’s brain: information present or information absent. In such a situation traditional investigative tools such as lie-detector cannot provide such levels of accuracy as system-driven and objective iCognative technology does. In case of Xu, investigation agencies can utilize case related investigation data such as: pictures and names of targeted experts and engineers at American and foreign aviation and aerospace companies including GE contacted by Xu; GE Aviation employee invited to China by Xu while (Xu posed as a technology association official); details of payments made by Xu for this professional’s travel; dates and contents of emails sent by Xu requesting specific proprietary information, etc., along with other details known only to the investigators can be flashed on a monitor for Xu to observe while he wears a specialized, non-invasive, proprietary headset designed just by Brainwave Science team during this test protocol. iCognative test can support the case of prosecutors with further evidence that Xu is a Chinese Spy whose job was to obtain technical information and trade secrets from foreign aviation and aerospace companies. Use of iCognative technology can help US intelligence agencies, the FBI and the Department of Justice find other active Chinese spies on the US soil and enhance country’s counter-intelligence operations.

iCognative shows whether information is present in the brain with instantaneous and accurate results. It presents unique possibilities of having a forensic tool to collect information by simply presenting words, pictures, or phrases to a suspect and securing the information held secret within their minds concerning threats and risks posed to US national security.